While the Japanese are busy stamping out mass market media hardware to compete with the all-American products of RCA, Zenith, Motorola, and the other corporate giants, there are a small, select group of electronics craftsmen in this country who have the creative flair and ingenuity of the Japanese, who eschew the worsted wet-dream of owning our souls, and who seem to be content with manufacturing products that are both functional and unique.

Many of these cottage industry electronics firms are located in New England. I guess the Yankee heritage is part of the process. They’re usually headed up by visionaries, and most are tucked away on side streets in small New England towns. There’s Henry Kloss, president of the Advent Corporation, for one. Kloss has spent the last six years and well over a million dollars coming up with a five by six foot color tv screen that he’s recently begun to market for $2,500 — $500 less than a similar Sony video projector of less quality and a smaller screen size. KLH and Acoustic Research are similar firms, attempting to make a quality product that is original and which they can sell enough of to support their on-going experiments with new ideas.

Another such gentleman is Gaylord C. Russell, who recently started Russound in Stratham, New Hampshire. (Russound/ FMP, Inc., Portsmouth Avenue Traffic Circle, P.O. Box 204, Stratham, New Hampshire, 03885). Russell’s products are a line of little boxes which allow the user to expand his or her hi-fi and musical amplifier equipment so that it can do things the manufacturer never intended. He’s succeeded admirably with a series of units which are well made and exceptionally functional. That seems to be the magic combination: construction and use. All of Russound’s products are constructed so that you can work with them without buttons or knobs falling off, without a break-down caused by inferior workmanship or parts. Many of his products could be made for half the price, but then they’d be toys rather than equipment.

I’ve been testing one of the Russound products for a couple of months now, their Gimp Battery Powered Portable Two Channel Microphone Instrument-Preamplifier Mixer. Got that? It’s

a solid little fifteen ounce box measuring 6 inches x 2 inches x 2 inches which lets you mix any two signals (mike, tape recorder, record player, and so forth) together to produce one composite signal. It’s a mixer in that sense, but unlike most two channel mixers it also functions as a pre-amplifier. The Gimp is made to last, the volunie control pots and all the internal components are of the highest quality and I know I can knock it around and not have to worry it’s going to fall apart — something I wish I could say about the equipment I’m using it with. The Gimp sells for $49.95 and is the best compact mixer I’ve ever used.

Another Russound goodie is their TMS-1W Tape Recorder Selector ($22.95) which lets you connect up to three tape recorders to operate through a single stereo amplifier. You can use any or all of the machines to record or play at the same time in any combination and there is a monitor switch which lets you hear what’s going on. Installing this little box to vour amp eliminates all the plugging and re-plugging that accompanies trying to make tape copies. You just slide the switches on the TMS-1W to connect your sources in the combination you need for what you’re doing. Mix-downs, dubbing, editing, sound effects mixing, and program productions are simple, neat, and easy with this unit.

If you have more than one set of speakers you want to run off of one amplifier, there are two Russound units which are available. One is the SWB-2W Speaker Amplifier Selector Switch for $25.95 which will let you select from one to three sets of speakers as the

point where the sound is to come-out and also has provision for two different inputs - say your amplifier and a tape recorder with built-in amps. A more complex version of this unit is the MP-2 Speaker Amplifier Switch Control ($74.95) which allows either of two sound sources to be played through any one, two, three, or four sets of stereo speakers. The MP-2 has a volume control for each of these channels as well as switches to let you determine which speakers are to operate.

The final unit from Russound is their IMP-1, an Impedaverter Battery Powered Microphone Instrument Preamplifier (39.95). This would probably only be of interest to rock musicians who want to use a high impedance mike yet would like to run a couple hundred feet of cable between the mike and the p.a. amp. The Impedaverter mounts on the mike stand (the Gimp also does this, it’s a clever idea which I’ve never seen before) and the mike plugs into it. There is a gain switch on the unit and the result is that a high quality hi-z mike can be used with up to five hundred feet of cable.

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Altogether Russound is only manufacturing seven, or eight items. Not a big compared to the hundreds of products and models produced by the giants, but enough to keep them going. What I want to stress is that Russound’s products are incredibly well-made, work without problems,'and can certainly come in handy if you do anything out of the ordinary with your hi-fi equipment such as mixing, dupping copies, or running more than one set of speakers with one amp.m